The point of my comment (which both the Evaluator and this AC commenter appear to have missed) is that JFK's line appears to have been given him by someone who had nearly no familiarity with German but did have an English-German dictionary and a firm belief that there exists a one-to-one mapping between English and German, words and idioms; a typical American, unfortunately. "Ich bin ein Berliner" means "I am one Berliner." Someone familiar with idiomatic German would most likely say something on the order of "Auch bin Ich Berliner": "I, too, am a Berliner."

How many Berliners did he think we thought he was?

I hope no one thinks this is a new problem. We had it back in the early 1960's (yes, really, all of a half-century ago). I once was told to attend a conference which stretched on for three days trying to get agreement on how long after the last change order the users would have to wait for delivery. The closest we could get to agreement was that if the change orders never stop there will never be delivery, and only the developers agreed to that: all the managers would agree to was "It can't be that bad." I didn't go back after the first day; I had constructive things to do.

If I ever manage to forgive Card for killing Ender I may manage to develop interest in his politics.

Anything that teaches kids how to identify foggy thinking (or worse, untruth) has the potential of destroying "civilization as we know it." On the whole, this may not be a bad thing, though it certainly has the potential of being even more traumatic to the world than the collapse of Communism was to eastern Europe.

Let us all thank Rep. Tim Couch for demonstrating the wisdom of Albert Einstein's observation that the difference between intelligence and stupidity is that there are limits to intelligence.